12 O Clock High Summary

12 O’clock High is about a bombing group in the United States Army who flew missions over Nazi Germany. It begins with a costly mission commanded by Colonel Keith Davenport in where many planes did not make it back. The next day they are ordered to fly another risky mission which upsets Colonel Davenport causing him to complain to his friends about it. It then shows a scene with Brigadier General Frank Savage who is talking to General Pritchard about Davenport’s groups failures in recent missions. General Savage brings up that he believes Colonel Davenport is getting to close with his men and it is causing issues with the group. They then go to the group headquarters and see that Colonel Davenport is being overprotective of his men, so Pritchard

He could easily be described as an autocratic or bureaucratic leader by following the rules strictly and even creating a few of his own to get his crew to be better. He shows many positive leadership traits including decisiveness, decision making, perseverance, communication skills, and a sense of responsibility. This is important especially when he had to deal with the failing crew who didn’t want to be there. The crew fell into the category of sheep and alienated followers when you look at their types before General Savage came. Many were very passive when it came to flying missions and did not even want to go on them. This all changed when General Savage forced them to fly the mission through the storm. Being the only group to do so and then successfully hitting the target gave the group a sense of pride that boosted their participation. This led to the group falling into the effective follower’s type and they started to successfully complete missions. This is obviously good for the group and makes General Savage happy but leads to a bad result in the end. General Savage begins to loosen some of the rules he put in place and gets more emotionally attached to his crew to the point where he is told to come back to his old position and refuses.

General Savage begins to start acting like Colonel Davenport towards the end of the movie. He starts feeling bad for his own men and getting too personal with them until he cracks from the losses one day. He has an emotional breakdown from not wanting to lose his men and in turn loses his ability to effectively lead the